Businesses in NYCWhat types of businesses are found in the city?

By: Divyanka Sharma

Aim To understand what types of businesses

are found in New York City What are the concentrations, according

to frequency, in each ZCTA? Can we compare neighborhoods? What types of business should I open?

Terms and Data Used ZCTA: Zip Code Tabulation Area. These

are conversions of zip codes for easier data analysis. Small differences but mostly the same as zip codes. Only NYC ZCTAs used.

NAICS codes: North American Industry Classification System. These are codes that define the industry that businesses fall under

Data Sources Used ZCTA: downloaded from census bureau NAICS codes: dataset bought from Dun

and Bradstreet, a data provider. This contains the names of all businesses, their NAICS codes, Zip codes, and other top level information, for the entire United States. This was bought by my company.

Cleaning the data First step is to extract only NYC data

from the US file Convert zip codes to ZCTA’s for easy

comparison. Also useful if want to run more tests using other census info later.

Attach descriptions of NAICS code id #’s to the dataset for readability of data

What do we find? The top 10 most common businesses,

by frequency of physical outlets, are the following:

Example plots of businesses in certain ZCTAs

Queens

Manhattan

Brooklyn

Queens

The Bronx

Problems with the data The data is from 2012, so there could be

some changes The NAICS codes themselves are not

very clear. Example: “all other businesses” category

This is self reported data, so there can be biases

Future Potential Can layer other information on top of

this to study more trends Can analyze what businesses an

entrepreneur should look into starting in certain ZCTAs

If time series data available, plot the change in frequency of businesses